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Edna Davies #6
Murder by Decay
Edna Davies is distressed, suffering from the worst toothache she can remember. Her dentist can’t help. He is the prime suspect in a homicide, and his office has been sealed off as the crime scene. His guilt would mean he purposely led Edna into a trap, an act of betrayal she will not accept. As she attempts to learn the truth, she stumbles into a web of intrigue dating back ten years. With the help of a little stray terrier, she finds her answers, but nearly loses her life in the process.
238 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 27, 2016
4 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Suzanne Young
11 books22 followersA writing career, in my opinion, springs from a love of words and of books. I’ve been an avid reader since about the time I could hold a book and a student of the English language since my earliest school days. I was the fourth of five children in my family and mostly ignored by my older siblings as the “pesky kid sister,” so I had plenty of solitary time to spend exploring people and places between the pages of any book I could get my hands on. My parents were both avid readers themselves, encouraging the same in all of us. We had an extensive home library that I could peruse whenever I couldn’t make it to the nearby local library.
Our weekends, summers and most school holidays were spent at a farm near Hope Valley, Rhode Island. The main house and outbuildings had originally been a stagecoach stop on the New London Turnpike, one of the first interstate highways in the country, built originally to link Providence and New London, Connecticut. In good weather, Mother would say, “It’s too nice a day to be inside. Go out and play.” Often, I’d take a book, find my favorite apple tree and read away the hours. Apple trees are wonderful places to hide out because you don’t have to climb down if you get hungry.
In middle school … known as “junior high” in my day … I was blessed with the most wonderful teacher for both English and History lessons. I credit Walter Blanchard for recognizing and encouraging the writer in me. He gave essay assignments to the class and selected students read their work aloud. I remember him praising one particular piece of mine as reminiscent of excerpts from “Life with Father.”
My love of Rhode Island and U.S. history came from several sources besides our old farm. Again, I am thankful for my middle school teacher who regaled his students with snippets of history that weren’t in our school books … at least not in the 1950’s … like the fact that George Washington had wooden false teeth. My father was another rich source of local history and my mother took us to many local places of interest, like Gilbert Stuart’s birthplace in Saunderstown. During the school year, we lived in an old house on Division Street, a road that divides the towns of Warwick and East Greenwich. The house was built in 1780 by Jeremiah Greene, a favorite uncle of Nathanael Greene, and served as both home and medical office. Although I didn’t appreciate its historic significance when growing up, I did know that the house was drafty with a spooky attic that smelled of dry, dusty wood and an unfinished cellar that always seemed humid and cold. If you’ve ever spent a night in a creaky old house with steam heat emitted through radiators, you can imagine “things that go bump in the night.”
I was in my thirties when I read my first Agatha Christie story and got hooked on the cozy mystery genre. By that time, I had moved to Colorado and, as fate would have it, unintentionally and unwittingly segued from a career in writing to one in computer technology. I began writing programs instead of newsletter articles, but my spare time was filled with mysteries and suspense. Shortly before I retired from the tech industry, I decided to try my hand at writing fiction in the genre I’d come to love and completely different from non-fiction and technical manuals.
I began my new career by taking short story classes and quickly learned that fiction isn’t as much about writing as about telling a story … or spinning a good yarn. Writing was the easy part; plotting a who-dun-it was the challenge.
I have just published my eighth book in the Edna Davies mystery series which is set in Rhode Island. I’ve been pleased to have my protagonist touted as a cross between Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher. My Colorado mystery, starring two elderly widows, may or may not be the beginning of another series. Time and my imagination will decide.
Our weekends, summers and most school holidays were spent at a farm near Hope Valley, Rhode Island. The main house and outbuildings had originally been a stagecoach stop on the New London Turnpike, one of the first interstate highways in the country, built originally to link Providence and New London, Connecticut. In good weather, Mother would say, “It’s too nice a day to be inside. Go out and play.” Often, I’d take a book, find my favorite apple tree and read away the hours. Apple trees are wonderful places to hide out because you don’t have to climb down if you get hungry.
In middle school … known as “junior high” in my day … I was blessed with the most wonderful teacher for both English and History lessons. I credit Walter Blanchard for recognizing and encouraging the writer in me. He gave essay assignments to the class and selected students read their work aloud. I remember him praising one particular piece of mine as reminiscent of excerpts from “Life with Father.”
My love of Rhode Island and U.S. history came from several sources besides our old farm. Again, I am thankful for my middle school teacher who regaled his students with snippets of history that weren’t in our school books … at least not in the 1950’s … like the fact that George Washington had wooden false teeth. My father was another rich source of local history and my mother took us to many local places of interest, like Gilbert Stuart’s birthplace in Saunderstown. During the school year, we lived in an old house on Division Street, a road that divides the towns of Warwick and East Greenwich. The house was built in 1780 by Jeremiah Greene, a favorite uncle of Nathanael Greene, and served as both home and medical office. Although I didn’t appreciate its historic significance when growing up, I did know that the house was drafty with a spooky attic that smelled of dry, dusty wood and an unfinished cellar that always seemed humid and cold. If you’ve ever spent a night in a creaky old house with steam heat emitted through radiators, you can imagine “things that go bump in the night.”
I was in my thirties when I read my first Agatha Christie story and got hooked on the cozy mystery genre. By that time, I had moved to Colorado and, as fate would have it, unintentionally and unwittingly segued from a career in writing to one in computer technology. I began writing programs instead of newsletter articles, but my spare time was filled with mysteries and suspense. Shortly before I retired from the tech industry, I decided to try my hand at writing fiction in the genre I’d come to love and completely different from non-fiction and technical manuals.
I began my new career by taking short story classes and quickly learned that fiction isn’t as much about writing as about telling a story … or spinning a good yarn. Writing was the easy part; plotting a who-dun-it was the challenge.
I have just published my eighth book in the Edna Davies mystery series which is set in Rhode Island. I’ve been pleased to have my protagonist touted as a cross between Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher. My Colorado mystery, starring two elderly widows, may or may not be the beginning of another series. Time and my imagination will decide.
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